Influencer marketing

Who is an influencer?

The word influencer comes from the word “influence”

Influencers are widely known people, who influence a multitude of people in one way or another. Nowadays, we usually talk about influencers from social networks, by which we mean bloggers, YouTubers, Instagrammers, vloggers… – that is, users of social networks with many followers. Influencers are supposed to be credible, persuasive, and have a wide network of followers with whom they are in a closer relationship than brands and companies. Their posts trigger waves of responses and communication that are relevant to them, the brand, the products, or the companies they work for. Many consumers seek confirmation about a product or service from an influencer before making a purchase decision. And who can be an influencer? This can be anyone who is very active online and has many followers, is an expert in their field, knows how to market themselves, has complete control on different platforms, and thus the ability to influence the opinions of thousands of people.

Why is it important to work with influencers?

If you want to use influencers to promote your brand, Instagram is the best choice to reach a new audience.

People trust the opinion of product users more than brand advertising messages. Marketing through influencers mimics personal selling, where “the individual buys from the individual”. An influencer has a constant good personal relationship with his followers, individuals trust his opinion, so advertising a product through an influencer can be very good for your brand. When an influencer recommends a product in his posts, his followers feel that the product is recommended to them by a friend and who would they trust more than a friend?

Working with influencers is also relatively inexpensive. Compared to the cost of well-prepared video advertising messages or billboards, you can spend much less money to work with an influencer, but still reach a wide audience. This means that even if you’re a small business that doesn’t have a big budget available for advertising campaigns, you can make use of it and succeed by using influencers.

The price of working with influencers

Social networks, especially Instagram, have become a gold mine for profiteers. There are no written rules on how prices should move. The main metric in determining the price for an individual post or story is primarily the number of followers. The more followers an influencer has, the more people his post will reach, and the higher the price will be. Global celebrities have the highest number of followers and they will charge a hefty fee for a post. With 211 million followers Cristiano Ronaldo is in the first place, followed by Ariana Grande and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Selena Gomez… The latter charge you well over € 500,000 for each Instagram post.

Alongside the big names, micro and nano influencers are also gaining ground. They will work with your company in exchange for a free product. Nano influencers are Instagram users who have a few thousand followers, and micro-influencers are individuals who are followed by between 10,000 and 100,000 individuals, but the definitions regarding numbers are not uniform. Of course, the easiest way to find out the price for an individual post/mention/story from a certain influencer is to simply ask him/her.

How can you make the most of influencer marketing as a small business?

You don’t need a huge bag of money to get the most out of Instagram. Although the big names of the Instagram world specifically charge for an individual post, you can contact nano influencers, who have a smaller number of followers, but they are all the more active and don’t perceive the nano influencer as a “star” but as a friend, someone they can rely on, and whose opinion they can trust.

When a nano influencer posts a certain product on their profile, followers feel that they are sharing a piece of friendly advice with them, which has a positive effect on your brand. Because nano and micro-influencers generally have greater reach and higher engagement of followers, with the help of 20 nano and micro-influencers you can reach a wider and more niche-specific audience than you would with a high-profile Instagram influencer. Collaborating with nano influencers pays off primarily for niche companies targeting local audiences.

If you own a boutique fashion store for women located in the center of a particular city, you could consider working with nano influencers in the city. For example, on Instagram, you find three girls from the same city who have between 2,000 and 10,000 active followers and suggest a long-term collaboration. In exchange for Instagram posts on which they wear your clothes, they can choose a certain number of pieces in your store each month.

How to find the right influencer for your brand?

Finding the right influencers for your brand can be quite a daunting task if you don’t know what you need to check. Follower numbers are just one of many metrics on the basis of which we decide on the “right” influencer. You can leave the search for influential people to us, but if you would like to feel the area a bit yourself, always check at least the following:

Engagement rate:
If an influencer has a high engagement of his followers, it means that they pay attention to the content that he publishes, and in return, he monitors and is actively involved in the conversation. Percentages of follower activity in larger influencers range around 2 or 3, but the higher the percentage, the better.

Quality of followers: 

Depending on which industry you are in, it makes sense to look for influential people as well. The latter are followed by individuals who may be interested in your products. Of course, you also need to check where the followers come from, how old they are, what gender predominates, what language they speak… You are looking for influential people with the audience that best approaches your ideal customer.

Number of followers:

The number of followers is no longer as important as it was a few years ago. The level of followers’ involvement decreases with the size of the Instagram profile, but you still want to work with an influential person who has an appropriate number of quality followers.

Check the quality and content of posts:

Similar to researching the quality of influential followers, check the quality of individual publications. Does the influencer’s writing style and photo quality match the image you want to project with your brand?

Check the length of the text on each post:
Try to find influencers who like to write a longer text at the time of publication, instead of expressing their opinion using only or mostly emojis.

How do I know if working with an influential person pays off at all?

Surely, sooner or later, you will be wondering how you even know if your investment in an influencer is paying off. In order to develop a successful marketing strategy for influential campaigns, you need to set a plan with clear and achievable goals.

Until 2019 companies had taken into account the number of likes, comments, and shares to measure campaign performance, however now they are increasingly shifting to actual sales, conversion, and website or physical store numbers. To see the numbers first hand, it’s a good idea to track conversions using the links that influencers use in their posts.

The goals you set can be different. You can track likes, followers, comments on your profile, visits to your website, track sales, or, say, brand awareness. As an agency, we can help you shape your goals together and achieve them successfully.

Why do other companies decide for influencer marketing?

The answers are simple:

• Given the low cost, influencer marketing is very effective

• Influential marketing is very effective, as it relies on the trust of followers in the influencer (unknown brands and companies with little consumer trust find it difficult to compete with large and well-known companies)

• A wide network of influencers on different platforms

• Classic ads have a short shelf life or exactly as long as the company pays for them. Video or photos on social networks remain visible longer. You could also say until the author deletes them

• By choosing the right influencer, the target group of people is reached very precisely, the right influencer (for small campaigns) can be found on Instagram in the appropriate field – a topic that interests us. Analytical tools are used on social networking platforms to reliably estimate the size of the network on social networks. In larger marketing campaigns, professional tools (InfluencerDB, Influma, Buzzsumo, HYPR, Buzzstream, Klear, Onalytica, Brandwatch) are used to find a suitable influencer.

• In influencer marketing, the brand addresses consumers indirectly. Instead of the brand praising itself, it is done on its behalf by an influencer whom the people in the target group of the brand trust. Therefore, it is important that the company chooses the influencer with its product in mind. If a product is cheap and a mass of products is sold, you need an influencer with a huge number of followers, Mass sells mass. In case the company manufactures expensive products for a specific group of users (which is usually smaller), then they choose an influencer who provides quality, surgically accurate information to a small group of followers, which may also be demographically limited. As an example, we can take a company that makes expensive mountain bikes and needs an influencer who is an expert in this field. He has fewer followers, of course, but they trust his opinion, based on which they decide to buy a bike worth thousands of euros.

• It is therefore crucial for companies to choose an influencer who is connected to the product and speaks the language of the target group. In major and international marketing campaigns, it is not only the number of followers of this individual that is decisive in choosing an influencer, but also how many other influencers are involved with him.